1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of digital image processing and, more particularly, to a computer vision based method and system for evaluating and grading surgical procedures.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires that each ophthalmology residency training program provides a wet laboratory for residents to prepare intraocular surgery prior to live human surgery. Training residents in cataract surgery has been a challenge for residency programs as a result of several factors:
1. Surgery is usually performed on an awake patient.
2. Wet lab facilities are underfunded.
3. Faculties are not funded for teaching.
4. Lack of high-fidelity, low-cost simulation models.
Porcine eyes were the traditional model for cataract surgery, but because of differences in anatomy and tissue consistency, teaching cataract surgery on a porcine eye can lead to a resident learning poor technique in performing capsulorrhexis and in phacoemulsification. Recently, the Kitaro simulation device was introduced, which provides a relatively low-cost, high-fidelity teaching tool.
We have recently incorporated the Kitaro system in a six-week course at the Flaum Eye Institute. University of Rochester Medical Center to help transition residents to the operating room. The Kitaro system consists of a synthetic cornea and cataract that mimics the anatomy and spatial relationships of a human eye. Trainees can practice all steps of cataract surgery using this system. Cataract surgery consists of seven surgical stages: 1) incisions, 2) capsulorrhexis, 3) hydrodissection, 4) phacoemulsification, 5) cortical clean-up, 6) lens insertion and 7) closing. Capsulorrhexis is the step in which a round, concentric, and symmetric hole is fashioned in the anterior capsule of the cataract using a bent needle and forceps. In week two of the Flaum Cataract Curriculum at the University of Rochester Medical Center, capsulorrhexis is taught in a didactic session with surgical video examples. The residents are then given a homework assignment to digitally record their practice sessions and submit for grading. The process of manually grading wet lab videos is time consuming for faculty and delays feedback to the trainee; additionally, the objectivity of faculty grading is not established.
Computer vision is a technology applied to analyze images, videos, and high-dimensional data from the real world in order to automate analysis and objectively assess. Computer vision technology, as well as image processing, is widely utilized in medical fields, such as in tumor detection and vessel analysis. For surgical training, especially for training through multimedia, computer vision technology can play an important role in analysis and evaluation of recorded practice sessions in a real-time, objective fashion.
What is needed is a system and method to increase the efficiency and speed of the surgical technique evaluation process.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a computer based evaluation system for cataract surgical techniques. It is another object of the present invention to provide a computer based evaluation system for cataract surgery videos. It is another object of the present invention to provide a computer based evaluation system for cataract surgery that recognizes the details in each of the surgical stages of cataract surgery. It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a computer based evaluation system for evaluating and grading cataract surgical techniques.